


Review of Nurses Pilot

by yourlibrarian



Series: Reviews [27]
Category: Nurses (Pilot 2007)
Genre: Episode Review, Gen, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-15 02:55:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29926854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourlibrarian/pseuds/yourlibrarian
Summary: Originally posted April 28, 2007
Series: Reviews [27]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/465847
Collections: March Meta Matters Challenge





	Review of Nurses Pilot

I got a tape in the mail from a survey company I was involved with. I was being asked to watch and review a new TV show. It turned out to be the pilot of "Nurses."

I'd seen a notice that Eliza Dushku had gotten the lead role in this pilot a while back but had completely forgotten about it. So I was quite surprised when in the first minute of the series she appeared. The show also stars Gregory Harrison as her father, and guest starred Tom Lenk as a CT scan operator who Eve flirts into doing a scan on a patient her half-brother doctor refuses to believe has a serious medical problem. It was fun to see the two together on screen again.

The show begins with Eve arriving at a hospital, whose layout is huge and confusing. We get introuduced to a team of various nurses, only four of whom we really get to know during the pilot -- played by Sara Rue, Drew Sidora, Ramon Rodriguez and Jaclyn DeSantis. (I'm afraid I don't remember the characters' names but the [IMDB page is here](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0954277/)). Rodriguez and DeSantis are dating one another, and we get our first shot of gratuitous manflesh when Rodriguez takes off his shirt as he changes into his scrubs. DeSantis is going through an unpleasant divorce and over the course of the episode spends most of her scenes with Lynn Redgrave who plays a bitchy dying patient who must be reconciled with her transsgendered son. We also meet DeSantis's husband briefly and he and Rodriguez (who has a scene where he is asked if he is gay since he is a nurse) have a metaphorical penis contest. The nurse played by Rue apparently aspires to become a doctor, but her husband, a police officer, is pressuring her to have children because -- apparently -- everyone else they know has them.

Eve ends up moving in with Sidora only to discover her first night there that Sidora (who later in the show admits she's a nurse in order to bed doctors) is sleeping with Eve's half-brother the doctor. (Gratuitous manflesh event #2 as she runs into him naked in the hall of her apartment). Eve's relationship with her brother is pretty stereotypical since she is the fallen daughter who spent years as a drug addict, never saw her dying mother, but finally cleaned herself up, and puts herself through nursing school. She decides to become a nurse because nurses were so good to her during a particularly bad period of her addiction. Her father is the head of the hospital and has hired her but gives her plenty of grief for her past and a very short leash, insisting on weekly drug tests. As his daughter however she is not immediately accepted as a colleague by the other nurses.

Eventually she shows signs of fitting in, her charge nurse (who has a crush on her father but runs a tight ship) allows her to continue on the job despite some questionable behavior, and she proves her brother wrong in his diagnosis of a patient. Eve bonds with her roomate over said "hot" patient whom they agree to share care of. We get to see the patient nude twice, once when he is in the shower and again when he's being carried to the bed by the two nurses (gratuitous event #3). 

Overall the show had some possibilities for interesting storylines but wasn't really that engaging. It was great to see Eliza heading up the show and she had an amusing (to me) entrance. When she first reaches the floor she will be working on, a patient has apparently had a bad reaction to something and has become violent. Most of the nursing staff has crowded into the room trying to subdue him but a hypodermic they want to inject him with goes skidding to Eve's feet as she appears in the doorway. I half-expected Faith to take him down in her own inimitable way, but as a nurse she simply injects him. He then, while falling, grabs the front of her shirt and pops it open so that when Eve's father appears (on rounds?) at the door with several doctors, she's standing there in her bra. We also get plenty of gratuitous cleavage throughout the rest of the show though not, thankfully, while the nurses are on the job.

The character of Jo, played by DeSantis was fairly memorable, and she did well in the role. Most everyone else was fine but the men were rather flat. Eve's brother is somewhat cartoonish, Harrison is ok, and a psychiatrist who he insists Eve visits (and who it seems she had a relationship with in the past) just seemed kind of blah. One good point is that the show has a nicely diverse cast. The question is how many interesting things they'll get to do. Medical dramas aren't really my thing and it seemed pretty ho-hum to me as far as those go. Also when at the tape's end we saw that it was produced by Fox (not sure where it's set to air) my SO said "It'll probably be cancelled before you can fill out the survey."


End file.
